Such an inner catheter is known as a Fogarty catheter. The inner catheter is equipped with an inner guide wire. The balloon is in its non-inflated state when the inner catheter is guided through the blood vessel, for example, for pushing the inner catheter tip through a thrombus found in the blood vessel. Thereupon, the balloon is inflated through the inner catheter to the inner diameter of the blood vessel, whereby the balloon is able to push the thrombus ahead of itself as the inner catheter is pulled back out.
Since thrombi and emboli generally extend across the crosssection of a blood vessel, in order to ensure their safe removal by means of a Fogarty catheter, a correspondingly large widening of the catheter insertion point must be made through a surgical cut in the blood vessel after prior surgical exposure under surgery conditions, such as anesthesia and anaemia.